I love watching The Olympics, but only every 4 years. On even-numbered years. It has become a sporting event like no other, incorporating weight lifting, swimming, track and field, and break dancing.

The Olympics has become very DEI, don’t you think? It used to be synonymous with running and jumping events, but now darn near every human endeavor except Coding has become an Olympic event.

But I have always been entranced by the jumping events, mainly because the force of gravity has always been a challenge for me to overcome. Not so with Olympian jumpers.

I recall a revolutionary change in the high jump event. Originally, the high jumpers would attack the horizontal bar face-on and clear the bar by rotating their whole bodies in a semi-circular path with the bar as the center of rotation.

Then along came Dick Fosbury. In the 1968 Olympics, the high jump event was turned on its head when Fosbury introduced the “Fosbury Flop” to the games and took the gold by a mile. My father took me to an indoor track meet not so long after that, and the fascination was the high jump. Naturally, Dick Fosbury and the Fosbury Flop was something to see, and see it we did.

Now they just call it high jumping.

Advance the clock 56 years to today, and we are witness to another need to revolutionize another jumping event.

The pole vault.

Witnesses to French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati’s attempt to clear the bar at 5.7 m saw him catch the bar with a not-so-small appendage just below his waist, and that ended his run for the event finals.

But this may have opened more doors for Ammirati: he was offered a new gig in the entertainment industry.

I maintain that he could gain more fame and attention – as well as fewer snagged bars – by incorporation of Dick Fosbury’s technique into his own.

They could call it the Ammirati Avoidance.

I’m not going to speculate on how the Harris team opted for Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz to be the Veep. I don’t really care. I hope no one else does, but that’ll never happen.

What surprised me is that Walz is just a little more than 6 months older than Harris.

Right?

Well, the fact that he looks like someone’s (as in like my own) grandfather must have something to do with his vocation as a high school geography teacher.

It ages you a bit.

I can’t vouch for what his time as his school’s state championship-winning football coach did to him. Most coaches I ever knew were tadpoles.

But how about that, huh? A high school teacher becomes Vice President of the United States.

Or am I jumping the gun here? Maybe I better wait and see whether President Maduro…er…TFG and his crew will allow all of this to happen after the Harris/Walz victory in November.

The main discussion this week has been who should Kamala Harris pick for Veep. But just as the field has narrowed this weekend, out comes an announcement that TFG will debate Harris on September 4th on Fox in front of an arena-sized crowd.

That was news to:
1) Fox,
2) Harris, and
3) Everyone else.

Harris immediately countered with a succinct ‘see you on September 10th on ABC’ response in reference to the previous agreement between the Biden/TFG camps.

But really, I have to ask at this juncture, should there even be a debate? Who is likely to benefit from one? In any given format? TFG? Harris? Voters?

I submit: None Of The Above.

Reasoning? I don’t think there is a ‘persuadable voter’ left to persuade in this year’s presidential election, and that’s a crazy thing to say. But this has been a crazy election year that makes the 1968 election look like an exercise in politics as usual.

The choices are so extremely divergent this year that I can’t imagine a single person (who knows that we have an election this year) that has not formed an opinion on either of the two options.

And in particular, I cannot imagine a single tortured soul out there who will change their opinion from supporting one of them to support the other as a result of a debate between them.

But wait. What about those who simply don’t vote at all? What if, as Julien Labarre, administrator of UC Santa Barbara’s Center of Information Technology and Society, says “…people who were not thinking of going to vote [are spurred] into participation, we do see that kind of effect.”

What if indeed? A sage once said: What if I had some ham? If I had some ham, I could have some ham and eggs.

If I had some eggs.

When we were kids, the older folks taught us a very valuable lesson. How do you know when a politician is lying? The answer? Their lips are moving. In all seriousness, lying and politics have gone hand in hand for the length of this experiment we call democracy. So, why is it so difficult for the mainstream media to do the basic job of vetting comments before running with them?

Apparently, Donald Trump has “agreed” to debate Kamala Harris on Fox News on September 4th. It will be beautiful in front of a packed MAGA house. It will be the best debate anyone has ever seen with fair and balanced moderators straight from Fox News. You won’t believe how great it will be. There is only one problem you have probably already guessed. Neither Fox nor Kamala Harris have agreed to anything.

Despite this, most mainstream media outlets initially reported that the two would debate on September 4th. Why? Simply put, Trump said so on his shitty little app. Of course the mainstream media ran with the story because of course Trump wouldn’t lie about something like this. The guy that told over 30,000 documented lies as president is the perfect kind of guy to take at his word no matter what he says.

That is until the try to cover up what he said and make it sound more palatable. The headlines only changed after they received a ton of pushback from readers and viewers. The media has never been able to figure out how to treat him as a whole, but we have occasional pockets of reporters that get things right. His appearance this past weekend before a group of African-American journalists was a masters class in holding him responsible for inflammatory rhetoric and dubious claims.

This is very simple and I can’t believe I have to write this down. He’s lying. If he’s arguing anything anywhere near policy he’s lying. He’s not even particularly good at lying. Imagine a second grader BS’ing their way through a copy of “Where the Red Fern Grows” and you have a good mental image. One good targeted question and that second grader goes running back to their seat with tears in their eyes. You know, big strong men with tears in their eyes.

The Trump way is to overwhelm you with a tsunami of lies. The hope and expectation is that you won’t catch them all. You don’t have to report on him in real time. You can stop and verify it simply because if it sounds like a load of crap then it probably is. Did he really agree to a debate on Fox? Does it make sense for Kamala Harris to agree to go on conservative sponsored media with conservative moderators and a conservative crowd? Of course, since the MSM bought it hook, line, and sinker, the Trump team gets to run with the narrative that Harris is backing out. It’s a really simple lie that a second grader could work through. I just wish the mainstream media were smarter than a second grader.

Oh, I do like a good mystery. Remember Catamaran Consulting, LLC? The “go to” place to spend Ted Cruz’s ill-gotten PAC lucre (aka podcast advertisement proceeds) courtesy of iHeartMedia? In order to go to Catamaran Consulting, you just input into a map app this address provided by the FEC’s Schedule E report:

And that takes you to an area known for its architecture, green spaces, and diverse culture in LA called Los Feliz. To a place just off Franklin Ave that looks like this:

It’s a mail drop.

The California Secretary of State, however, has the “true” mailing address of Catamaran Consulting, LLC. According to The Google, that would be right here.

Nice digs huh?

Now, I’m beginning to wonder if Catamaran Consulting, LLC originally was a yacht sales agency.

By way of apology, and in my defense, this isn’t my job. Fran said I’d do the toons on Friday, so I’ll do them. But this week I’ve seen a notable dearth of political cartoons in my usual feeds, so in order to fully populate this posting with the requisite number, memes will have to do.